AWS IoT provides several connectivity models to enable IoT devices to establish their connection. Currently, AWS IoT offers the following protocols:

• Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT)
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
• MQTT over Websocket 

We can build a connectivity model between IoT devices and the AWS IoT backend. We can categorize the IoT device platform into the following three models based on their supported connectivity:

• For an IoT device with network capabilities, if this device has all the support required by AWS IoT, then this device can access AWS IoT directly.
• The second connectivity model is to build a connection to AWS IoT through a gateway. This approach is applied for an IoT device that has network capabilities which are not supported for AWS IoT protocols.
• The last approach is to be applied to IoT devices...

We already know that there are a lot of IoT devices on the market. To work with AWS IoT, Amazon provides guidelines about a list of IoT devices with supported AWS IoT. You can read it at https://aws.amazon.com/iot-platform/getting-started/#kits. Otherwise, you can use own IoT devices and ensure that they are compatible with AWS IoT SDK by referring to https://aws.amazon.com/iot-platform/sdk/.

From this, you can make a self-assessment when you select an IoT device for the AWS IoT platform. You can verify your selection with the following questions:

• Does the IoT device have a network capability? A network capability probably can identity network features such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and LoRa.
• Does the IoT device network module give support for the AWS IoT protocol? Make sure your IoT device can communicate with...

In this section, we will configure an IoT device in order to access AWS IoT. Several steps should be taken to complete the registration process:

1. Firstly, we create a thing type. You can perform this task on the Manage | Types menu from AWS IoT Console and then click on the Create button. Fill in the type name and attributes for your IoT device. For instance, we give a thing type as IoT-Device with  name as the thing attribute :

2. After this has been created, you should see it on the Types screen from the AWS IoT dashboard, as shown in the following screenshot:

3. Next, we add three IoT devices into AWS IoT. Navigate to Manage| Things on the AWS IoT dashboard. Then, you add a thing name and its attribute as shown in the screenshot below the table. The following is our configuration of IoT devices:

Raspberry Pi is a famous IoT development. At a low price, you can obtain a minicomputer. Some demo scenarios in this book can be implemented using a desktop computer. Currently, Raspberry Pi 3 is the latest product from Raspberry Pi Foundation. For further information about Raspberry Pi and getting this board, I recommend that you visit the official website at http://raspberrypi.org.

Raspberry Pi 3 can be deployed on various OSes, such as Linux and Windows 10 IoT Core. In this chapter, we will focus on Raspberry Pi 3 with Linux as the OS. We use Raspbian Linux. You can download and install it at https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/.

Raspbian Linux can work as a console or in desktop mode. You can see Raspbian Linux on Raspberry Pi 3  in the following screenshot:

The corresponding AWS IoT SDK  is available at...

Most IoT device developments use the Arduino board as the board target. Since Arduino shares schemes and designs, the makers make their own boards with custom Arduino models. Arduino models range from the basic Arduino board model to the advanced Arduino board model. The Arduino board is the best choice to introduce IoT development.

In this section, we will explore how to use Arduino Yún to interact with AWS IoT. For further information about Arduino Yún, I recommend that you read the official documentation at https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/ArduinoYun.

To work with AWS IoT using Arduino Yún, we perform the following steps:

1. Install the Arduino software
2. Connect Arduino Yún to a network through Ethernet or a Wi-Fi module
3. Configure Arduino Yún for AWS IoT SDK
4. Build a program for Arduino Yún

Each step will be performed...

The ESP32 chip is an MCU with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth network modules. This chip is developed by Espressif. For further information about the ESP32 chip, I recommend that you read the product documentation at http://espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp32/overview.

There are a lot of boards based on ESP32. You can find various boards based on  ESP32 from SparkFun, Adafruit, or embedded companies from China. To work with AWS IoT on the ESP32 chip, we can apply the Mongoose OS platform from Cesanta. You can review the details of this platform on the official website at https://mongoose-os.com.

Cesanta provides an IoT kit-based ESP32 chip, called Mongoose OS ESP32-DevKitC. The software of Mongoose OS is built from Node.js/JavaScript. To configure this board connecting to AWS IoT, you can follow the instructions at https...

In this section, we will try to develop a simple IoT application by applying the  AWS IoT platform. We will deploy the IoT program on several IoT devices. These devices will use sensors to sense the physical environment, and then send a result of the sensing to AWS IoT. We will also create a small application to listen to incoming messages from AWS IoT. This is called the sensor subscriber application.

You can see a general demo architecture in the following figure. For testing, we use Arduino Yún as the IoT device node:

We  will build each component in the next section.

We should configure your AWS IoT. We already configured this in Chapter...